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Space opera has come of age in recent decades, its potential for complex characters,
mind-blowing scope, and a kind of joyous, just plain wonderful strangeness
expressed fully in the novels of writers like M. John Harrison, Alistair
Reynolds, and Justina Robson, to name just a few. But the Godfather of this
sea-change, and still one of the major players in space opera today, is Iain M.
Banks.

For twenty-five years now Banks’ restless imagination has conjured up dozens of unique characters, aliens, and approaches to storytelling for his Culture space opera series. The novels often wed page-turning adventure, mystery, and intrigue to incisive commentary on issues related to war, morality, philosophy, and religion. At least two
Culture novels, if not more, qualify as masterpieces: Consider Phlebas
and Use of Weapons. Many of the others come close, with every reader
having their own favorites—expect arguments in the comments.

His latest, The Hydrogen Sonata, has just
been released by Orbit. In the novel, the ancient people who helped set up the
Culture ten thousand years before plan to go Sublime, elevating themselves to a
more complete existence. But this process is interrupted when a regimental
command is destroyed, with the hunt on for the fugitives and for the oldest man
in the universe. And all of this may have much, much wider implications—for the
Culture and for everyone else. Suffused with wit and humor, yet also including
those amazing moments space opera fans live for, The Hydrogen Sonata continues to fruitfully explore the Culture
milieu.

What is the
Culture? A far-future human-based galactic civilization that, in its attempts
at progressive, benevolent rule, sometimes gets it chillingly wrong. Perhaps
his most inspired creation has been the Culture’s intelligent ships, with
avatars that can manifest as human. In Excession,
the first Culture novel I read, the ship battles and ship communications were a
major (and often tense!) highlight.